The Bobby Blackwolf Show

Xbox is continuing their "streamlining" by moving studios under Activision and Bethesda and rehoming the Halo franchise with Call of Duty developers. Meta has announced the Meta VR Glasses, their cheaper competitor to the Apple Vision Pro. Sony has been issued a patent to place a credit card chip reader into a game controller. We hop on the JimSally train as he calls in to be the Official Spokesma...

I give my big Dragon Con recap of the panels I hosted. While I didn't get to do much else, I did go into the arcade once and got to play some games. We also talk about why the biggest cosplay group was not from a movie or TV series, but from a book. The Steam Frame has finally gone on sale - for some buyers. A reservation system was used and sadly I did not win the lottery to give Valve my money,...

I saw Coyote vs. Acme in the theater at full price, and enjoyed it. It's actually really good, but I'm not sure I would have seen it if it wasn't for the drama about its release. Playdate has announced that they will refund their tariff upcharges to customers. Several indie game exhibitors at Gamescom in Germany had their shows cut short due to thefts of their locked up laptops and Steam Decks. Th...

Sorry this took a while to get up (a month!) - between Dragon Con and illness, this episode and 993 sat in the queue to be edited for podcast. There were no live episodes in September until September 20th. Nintendo is raising Switch 2 prices on September 1st, and we just learned how much they will be going up in the UK. This is because of components, not because of geopolitical financial situation...

I am moderating many panels at Dragon Con in Atlanta this year - come say hi! I built the LEGO Arcade Cabinet! Too many stickers... Twitch is training Amazon's generative AI on streamers content - but they loudly told people how to opt-out, and the reason they loudly said it might surprise you. Netflix has closed Night School studio, which developed Oxenfree and the recently released Unhinged, whi...

EA is now completely owned by Saudi Arabia's PIF and partners, and is no longer publicly traded. Layoffs and shutdowns are incoming. Indie publisher Devolver Digital has announced its intentions to become privately owned, saying that the responsibilities to shareholders do not align with being a good game publisher. The CEO of Take Two says that we all will be streaming our games from the cloud in...

The Southern-Fried Gaming Expo was this week, and I talk about the pinball and arcade games that were there. I give my impressions on the new Sonic the Hedgehog pinball machine from Jersey Jack. I also give my impressions on the new Bon Jovi pinball machine that was released at SFGE by Barrels of Fun Pinball. I talk about Gen Con and Multimorphic's new Dungeon Crawler Carl and Ender's Game modules...

On this show that turned 21 years old, we...just did a normal show and then it took a few weeks for it to hit the podcast feed. Sorry bout that! The Steam Frame could wind up being even more expensive, as well as other mobile devices like other VR headsets, because Qualcomm is raising the price of it's Snapdragon line of chips. Arcade1up was at San Diego Comic-Con with new versions of arcade cabin...

I will be moderating two panels at the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo from July 31-August 2nd in Atlanta! Microsoft restores an unrestorable 25 year old account that was hacked after learning the user was a prominent content creator. Valve has says that the RAM crisis is going to get worse, as they are seeing leading indicators that prices will rise even more for consumers in 3-6 months time. A new up...

EA Sports has reversed course and taken out unpopular singleplayer microtransactions from College Football 27 thanks to backlash from their own content creator network. Xbox lays off most of iD Software, including many long time employees with deep institutional knowledge, and then says that the team is the same size as it was 10 years ago and this is good, actually. Bethesda's employee union is p...

A Steam Machine case based on the Companion Cube from Portal is no longer being made - because the company never had permission to make it in the first place. Sony is going to stop producing physical discs starting in January 2028. Sony is shutting down their PS3 and PS Vita digital stores over the next year. Some game preservation groups have said what the only real option is to preserve the artf...

We talk more about the FIFA World Cup and the matches I attended in Atlanta. Jersey Jack Pinball has announced a new pinball machine based on Sonic The Hedgehog, and the headlines once again focus on the high price of owning pinball. Find a pinball arcade near you and request it so you can play it for just a dollar or two! The Steam Machine has launched with a price much higher than Valve initiall...

I went to two World Cup matches this week, so we start the show talking about sports and the cultural exchange that is happening. We remember Bobby Prince, the composer who worked on many 90's era DOS games like Doom and Commander Keen. He passed away at the age of 81. Xbox is possibly closing Double Fine, Compulsion Games, and Ninja Theory, in order to "reset" the business. Unreal Engine 6 will b...

Valve will no longer sell physical gift cards in retail locations because of scammers using the cards to steal innocent people's money. Xbox has said that more layoffs and studio closures are coming to "reset" the business. The ESA says that the No Fakes act that is currently going through congress to regulate "digital replicas" will "destroy the game industry". This leads into a discussion of how...

Summer Game Fest was this week, so we talk about the games that Sony, Microsoft, and third parties showed at this Not-E3 week. Included in this is the whiplash of 1666: Amsterdam between the trailer and the playable prologue, the difference between Tupac's estate and his family, and my hopeful take on Persona 6's direction. Crazy Taxi: World Tour was also announced, but has a disclaimer that gener...

The Doom soundtrack has been inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry! Stern Pinball has announced their new pinball machine based on the Transformers cartoon series, and why you don't need to spend thousands of dollars to play it. Sony has announced that they will no longer be porting their single-player games to PC, keeping them PS5 exclusive. Then we talk about more t...

I played through Mixtape via Xbox Game Pass and I enjoyed it - but it's not going to be my GOTY and it didn't really reflect on my personal experience growing up in that time period. But you can wait for a sale - Mixtape's music licenses were agreed to in perpetuity, so the game will not be delisted. I then talk a lot about Forza Horizon 6, and how we've started to enter the roster update phase of...

I got the Steam Controller, and give my early impressions, as well as bemoan the fact that it can only be used in Steam and not in any other PC gaming content, such as games from Xbox Game Pass or Play Anywhere. Valve is implementing a reservation queue for future shipments of the Steam Controller due to the popularity of the first wave of orders. Nintendo has increased the price of the Switch 2 d...

I was in Indiana visiting in-laws last week, and this led to a discussion of "third spaces", and a third space I wish was near me - a coffee and board gaming space in Greenfield, Indiana called Hitherto Coffee & Gaming Parlour. The Steam Controller went on sale the day after we went live (and sold out almost instantly) - but the trick is to get funds into your Steam Wallet beforehand so you're not...

Sorry this was uploaded weeks late - a lot of things happened. We're getting caught up very quickly, though! I was at a tech conference this past week and it was a dystopia regarding agentic AI...and the agents didn't even work properly! While I was in town, I visited the new Nintendo San Francisco store! On the flight home, I started playing Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream, and I'm not as drawn...

I was on Jury Duty on an 8 day case. Nothing about video games and nothing really juicy, but it was a drain on me. Amazon is shutting down parts of Luna, taking away people's access to games they paid for, and not offering any refunds. The indie developer behind Papers, Please has come out and stated that they will no longer talk about new projects because they are afraid that AI will take them an...

Stormgate, an indie online multiplayer game, is shutting down its online servers because their provider, Hathora, has been purchased by Fireworks AI who are turning the online game servers into AI servers. Rec Room is shutting down in June, despite having over 150 million players. Snapchat's parent company has purchased some of Rec Room's assets and hired some of the talent to help them foster an...

EverQuest Legends has been announced - a version of EverQuest that goes back to 1999 but adds features to allow the entire game to be soloable. Sony is increasing the PS5 price by $100 to $150 due to the AI infrastructure roll out taking all of the RAM and storage away from consumer products. Epic Games lays off 1000 Fortnite developers, including leads who were influential in Fortnite's continued...

My first job was at Blockbuster Video, so I had to try Retro Rewind: Video Store Simulator. The Metaverse is no longer in VR - according to Meta - they are moving Horizon Worlds off of VR and onto mobile. Nvidia announced DLSS 5 and a vocal part of the internet rallied against it...but what about the majority that aren't terminally online? Bethesda reacted to the reactions and said they would be l...

We do start talking about retro computing with the Commodore 64 Ultimate - especially navigating BBS's in 2026 and how they differ from the standard internet we are used to today. "Major Nelson" Larry Hryb, formerly of Xbox and Unity, has joined Commodore as a Community Development Advisor. Zen Studios announced that their line of Zen Pinball software is being renamed, and that World Cup Soccer is...